When Osprey Games announced Joseph A. McCullough’s upcoming game Warriors of Athena I was more than a bit exited.
The game promises to be a winner with two books in the initial release the Heroes book linked above, and Warriors of Athena: Quests. The game is set in the realms of Greek Myth and will allow solo, co-op and Oracle (a GM of sorts I’m guessing) led games to be played.
The game is set to be released on the 26th of February 2026 and is available for pre-order from Osprey Games. Also, Northstar Military Figures have been teasing new miniatures and have mentioned a pre-order bundle on their Facebook page.
The Heroes book will detail creating Heroes and their warbands as well as rules of play and the Quests book will contain a bestiary of monsters, adversaries and gods, advice for creating scenarios, four multi-scenario campaigns and rules for adventuring in the game world.
As a young chap growing up in the 70’s I was entranced by old films like Jason and the Argonauts with Ray Harryhausen’s incredible stop motion animated monsters and the memory of one scene in particular made me want to kit bash some monsters ready for playing the game, yeh the sowing of the hydra’s teeth. As I’d recently kitbashed some skeletal roman legionaires for The Silver Bayonet I thought that I’d try some skeletal Greek Hoplites. I also remember a schools tv (or possibly radio) retelling of the Odyssey with great fondness.
Start with the Head and the Body will follow – building the miniatures
Using more Oathmark Skeleton Infantry for the skeletal bits and some Early Greek Hoplites from Warlord Games, my first job was to find a way to get a skeletal head inside a hoplite helmet.
I started off by drilling out a chunk of the plastic to start hollowing out the helmet and starting to cut away the areas where the face would be. I’ve started using adhesive putty to hold parts in place when I cut them. It helps minimise bits pinging off to disappear behind the sofa!
This sort of worked but not very well as when it came to cutting the part from the skull to fit in the helmet, there was only a tiny bit of plastic which isn’t very visible when glued in place.
Next I cut up both minis to separate out the parts of the legs I was going to use and the hoplites torso.
Then I stuck the greaves from the hoplite to the skeletons feet and the thigh bones to the top of the greaves.
The leg assembly was aided by the addition of bits of paperclip to give some strength to the re assembled legs.
I then drilled holes in the bottom of the hoplite torso for the top of the legs to fit in and stuck the skeleton neck, then the head on top. The hoplite helmet crest was also added to the helmet.
The skeletons come with a spear carrying arm and a shield carrying arm but as can be seen on the left shield the hoplite shields needed the arms removed.
Next I added the bottom spike from the hoplite spear to the bottom of the skeleton’s spear and glued the skeleton’s left arm to the hoplite shield, using a bit of card as a spacer so that the skeleton’s arm wasn’t flush with the shield. I also drilled a small indentation on both sides of the hoplite torso to fit the skeleton’s shoulders.
For the remaining kit bashes I decided that I would use skeleton heads that already had helmets and make them look more like those of the hoplites. So I used some blue stuff to make a moulds of the sides of the hoplite helmets. Then adding green stuff in the mould and cutting it when set to add to the skeleton helmets. This together with a little re-modelling of the helmet with a scalpel looked better than the previous method.
For the remaining miniatures I didn’t want to have the faff of all the pinning and glueing leg parts together so I went with the plain skeleton legs.
The plan was to use a blue stuff mould of the hoplite greaves but the results were not very good so I went with just adding greenstuff directly to the skeleton legs and model it to look similar to the greaves.
Painting the miniatures
Starting with a grey undercoat using Vallejo Mecha grey primer. This works well either through an airbrush or with a paint brush which is great as I am a little impatient and don’t always want to set up the airbrush.
This is the step where the minis start looking better. Up to this point they do look a bit bodged together, which I suppose they are but the primer pulls it all together.
Adding the base coats. For the bones – Army Painter Warpaints Fanatic Ivory White with a little Army Painter Warpaints Oak Brown. The Ivory White is from the John Blance Masterclass set 1
For the Cloth I went with Army Painter Brainmatter Beige and a little Oak Brown, and Army Painter Warpaints Fanatic Basilisk Red. All areas that are going to be metal or leather I used a base coat of Army Painter Warpaints Dirt Splatter.
Next was adding some highlights and metallic colour. Highlights for the bones was Ivory white and the cloth Brainmatter Beige or Army Painter Warpaints Fanatic Pure Red. For the metallic areas I used Army Painter Warpaints Fanatic Rough Iron with highlights of Weapon Bronze.
Next I added a wash of Army Painter Warpaint Fanatic Voodoo Shade and for the red cloth Citadel Colour Shade Carroburg Crimson.
I wasn’t happy with how the leather looked and wanted to darken it so used some Army Painter Speed Paint Fire Drake.
Not shown in the photo above, I did a very basic shield design inspired by the eye on the front of the Argo in the Jason and the Argonauts film and I remember seeing them on Maltese fishing boats, and they are probably used all over the Mediterranean. I am not very confident with freehand stuff but this design was fairly simple and used one colour, Army Painter Warpaints Stone Golem. Then I added some chipping with a sponged on mix of Weapon Bronze and Rough Iron.
Finally I mixed Kromlech Light Mud Weathering Powder with Monument Hobbies Pro Acryl Newsh to grunge the mini’s up a bit. For the bases I used some filler and some dead grass tufts.
Overall I think the mini’s are ok. They don’t look as good as the Roman Legionnaires to my eye but that is ok. They do look wonderfully grubby though so that is a win! I enjoyed making and painting them and they will look good on table.
Are you looking forwards to the Warriors of Athena game? Have you done a similar kitbash project? Let me know in the comments.
#warriorsofathena #miniaturepainting #kitbashingminiatures #wargaming #skirmishwargaming #solowargaming
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